BEAUTIES OF THE BOSPHORUS. 143
or bound over the "Devil's current" with the assistance of the yelik, or towing-rope, which is flung on board by persons who gain a subsistence in assisting the labouring boats through the whirling eddies, where the oars of the boatmen cannot avail. A small silver coin, its amount depending on the liberality of the traveller, repays this service; and the Sheitan Akindessi once passed, the oars are resumed, the yelik cast off, and the freed caique again shoots forward like an arrow.
There is probably no boat in the world so thoroughly elegant - the canoe of the Indians, the gondola of the Venetian, even the antique classical-looking bark of the Arab, beautiful as it is, must yield the palm to the fairy boats of the Bosphorus.
The situation of Beil-Gorod is very fine, as it commands the entrance of the Bosphorus from the Euxine; and every vessel bound from the "Sea of Storms" to the Golden City necessarily passes before it, producing a constantly varied panorama full of movement and interest. The Jouchi Daghi frames in the picture on one side, sobering its tints, and recalling the tradition of its former occupant, who if he did not actually "sit upon a rock, and bob for whales," was, according to the legend, quite, able to have done so, had he wished it;while in the other direction the "ocean-stream," winding between its romantic shores, stretches away far as the eye can reach, now lost behind some wooded height, now seen again beyond it, until earth and water, bay and mountain, become blent in one pure glittering purple, and are lost amid the horizon.
PLATE AQUEDUCT OF BAGHTCHÈ KEUI.
THE AQUEDUCT OF BAGHTCHÈ-KEUI.
Closed be the eye which coldly has beheld
The long-enduringmonuments of eld,
Nor read upon their proud and hoar decay
A lesson to the vanity, which, based
Upon the empty follies of to-day
Lets all the soul's best feelings run to waste. - MS.
ALLUSION has already been made to this fine old aqueduct, which spans the beautiful meadow above Buyukdère with its lofty arches. The view from it is a singularly lovely, and very extensive; valley and mountain, land and water,